


Dissonance IV (Hell Breaks Loose)

by thaliaarche



Series: Dissonance [4]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Dark, Drama, F/M, Future Fic, Horror, M/M, Murder, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-21 05:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6040249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thaliaarche/pseuds/thaliaarche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An earl and his butler live on sex, tea, and murder— you know, your usual SebaCiel shenanigans!</p><p>From Elizabeth's perspective.</p><p>Things get dark.</p><p>(Previous knowledge of the Dissonance series is not required; this is not in the same universe as Dissonance III.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To new readers, welcome to the bizarre, distorted world of Dissonance. 
> 
> To those of you who have read some of the previous works, thanks for coming back. This fic is emphatically not in the same universe as Dissonance III, and it's probably not in the same universe as Dissonance II, either. However, Dissonance I holds true here.

“Black isn’t cute at all,” Elizabeth Phantomhive whispered.

Even though she was still looking down, inspecting her black silk gown as the tailor puttered about the hem, she heard her husband’s immediate snort. Worse, she could feel that butler’s silent smirk burning into her back, his eyes no doubt flickering with amusement. She shivered, trying to put them both out of her mind.

For what more could she say, when Mother was dead?

\---

“Really, I don’t understand how these servants aren’t worried out of their minds, what with all the silverware disappearing over and over again! But Mister Sebastian says not to worry. He must know where it all goes, somehow . . .”

As she undressed her mistress that night, Paula prattled about this and that, straining to keep up a flow of pleasant chatter. Elizabeth heard snatches of it and was grateful for her maid’s attempt at pretending normalcy. Still, she drifted back into her own, wretched thoughts.

She thought of Frances Midford, tall, straight-backed, and impossibly capable, as likely to have a rifle in her hands as a needle and thread. Frances Midford, who had proved herself in fencing matches across England and the Continent. Frances Midford, who had never flinched from her duty to the royal family, a woman who had taken up arms in the heat of battle and lived to tell the tale. Frances Midford, who was found dead at Midford Manor, done in by a single blow to the neck.

The weapon was apparently unidentifiable— neither a fist nor a blade nor a bullet. At that point in the police briefing, Elizabeth had begun to cry, and Ciel had ushered her from the room, admonishing the officer for exposing a lady to such violence. Disoriented from shock, she had let herself be driven from the conversation, but she still noticed the knowing look that passed between her husband and that butler.

After Paula left, Elizabeth waited for hours, hoping Ciel would come to her room. She then considered, briefly, whether she might want to visit his room instead, but she felt this option was perilous, for reasons she could not clearly articulate. Finally, she collapsed on her bed, exhausted and alone, and fell into a sleep hung with nightmares.

On the morning of the funeral, she asked for a moment of privacy with her mother, and— after another shared look with Sebastian— Ciel nodded. When the room was empty, she approached the open casket, stroking the blonde hair with its few silver threads, smoothing the dress, smiling at her mother’s calm expression, more peaceful than it had ever been in life.

Then she reached for the starched collar of Mother’s dress and pulled it down, revealing four red puncture holes, close together, lined in a row across her pale skin.

A lethal wound from a silver fork.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Question: How quickly can the typical "SebaCiel happy-ever-after" come crashing to the ground?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanon: Reapers are not supposed to collect contracted souls or otherwise interfere with them, so the deaths of contracted souls are not predicted in their records. This protection from reapers is one of the main reasons why demons bother with contracts at all.

Frances had warned her daughter about Ciel, about the Phantomhives, but about Sebastian most of all.

Now Elizabeth was engaged in a duel— or a dance, perhaps. She stepped around that butler, stole glances at those unnatural, blood-red eyes, reevaluated his impossibly lithe, feline movements, responded by walking more swiftly and lightly herself. She let slip that mask of girlishness, which her mother had so carefully cultivated, and directed an openly watchful gaze towards both Ciel and Sebastian.

Ciel noticed her observing him over the long stretch of the dinner table. “Have you something to say?”

“I believe I have nothing worth saying,” Elizabeth retorted, blushing as Ciel burst out with laughter. She turned her attention to the butler in time to catch the smile also flashing across his face.

“Really, Lizzie,” Ciel was still chuckling. “You should stop ogling our butler. He’s not exactly available.”

She choked on her food and turned to her husband, then back to Sebastian, who coolly matched her stare. Shuddering, she excused herself from the table and rushed to her room. Paula was likely downstairs, not expecting her mistress to leave dinner so soon, so Elizabeth expected her room to be dark, would go and let herself sob in the darkness . . .

Two green eyes glittered above her bed.

Before Elizabeth could scream, the lamps were lit, and he was standing in front of her, shushing her with a long, pale finger pressed to her lips. She stumbled back, only to find the door she had thrown open was somehow now shut. He stepped back with a smile. Trembling, she stifled her shout and looked him up and down.

He seemed to be a young man, only a little older than she, yet his hair was long and tangled and gray— he had likely donned a wig as a hasty disguise. The silver bangs were brushed back to reveal what may once have been handsome features, but his face was now unhealthily pale and crossed by a scar oddly like a string of jewels— or a row of half-healed stitches. He wore an ill-fitting black cloak that outlined a bony, angular frame.

"Smart girl," he murmured with a low, unctuous voice that she recognized from somewhere but couldn’t quite place. "Fun as it might be to hear you scream, that would not serve either of us well at all."

“Tell me why I shouldn’t call for help.”

“Because there is only one person here with a chance against me, and you should be more scared of him than me.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“Of my former self, perhaps.” He gave a small, scratchy laugh. “So you have deduced that your butler specializes in supernatural dealings. I am amused. But, to be clear, Sebastian would not call me a ghost.”

“What would he call you?”

“Madman. Murderer. An enemy almost worthy of him.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened, yet she raised her chin and gave him her best ladylike stare. “Then you are evil, and you must leave this home at once.”

“Sebastian would not call me evil. That is a title he reserves for himself.” The man stayed standing there and clutched his cloak tighter. “Is evil really out of place in this home?”

She swallowed hard.

“You can see his influence over Ciel, can’t you?” he sighed. “You can see how he has dulled the innocent light of that young soul, has dyed it with eternal ash?”

“Souls can’t be changed like that.”

“And yet I have watched Ciel succumb before my eyes, over these past few years.”

“Let us say you are telling the truth, and are not entirely delusional,” Elizabeth whispered after a moment. “If you care about Ciel, why haven’t you already saved him?”

“Oh, I’ve attempted to— I told him to hold each and every soul dear, didn’t I? But he has destroyed so many souls now, he can never be a guardian of them. You see, Lady Elizabeth,” he said, his smile now pained, “I fear my best strategy has crumbled. This leaves me with the back-up plan, which brings me to you.”

“What are you asking?”

“Those two suspect everyone, but they suspect you least.”

“Because I love Ciel?”

“No, because they think you’re an idiot,” he corrected, raising an eyebrow. “Amazing what one can hide with a silly laugh.”

She thought of her giggling, her glee over fashionable dresses and fine dances, and nodded.

“Ciel’s soul is in the greatest danger,” he said, shaking his head. “Already, Sebastian Michaelis has been nibbling away at it . . .”

“How?”

“As his wife, you might not like to know, Lady Phantomhive.” Even as she colored at the implication, he continued, “Sebastian is owed the entirety of your husband’s soul, and he intends to take it and torture it most painfully whenever Ciel dies. I have pulled some strings— the strings of Fate, that is— to give Ciel one last chance, but nothing will happen without your help.”

“What would you have me do?”

He leaned forward and whispered into her ear. Elizabeth staggered backwards, her green eyes alight with revulsion, and he watched her, his own eyes soft with something like pity.

“Sebastian will kill me,” she muttered, trembling.

“Yes.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because, tomorrow, I suspect I will be repaid.”

Then he was gone.

It wasn’t possible, Elizabeth told herself. He was a madman, he said it himself, a raving lunatic who belonged in an asylum. And just like everyone else he considered her a silly, foolish girl, so he thought he could make her jealous of Sebastian— the butler, of all people! He was trying to twist her with his fictions, to turn her against Ciel with his empty lies. And yet . . .

In a panic she dashed from her chamber, down the hallways to Ciel’s master bedroom, footsteps pounding, heart quivering. She burst in, only to be blinded, for the room was utterly lightless.

Ciel’s voice came out of the black. “Idiot.”

“Her or me?” A silken purr drifted from the direction of the bed, undoubtedly from that butler’s lips.

“You, for once. Do you go utterly deaf when you’re with me?”

“Not to worry, young master.” Feeling a gloved hand clamp down over her mouth, Elizabeth attempted to scream, but the sounds died in her throat. “She will remember nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is the ending of this chapter a cliche out of every horror movie? Yes. Did I have a lot of fun writing it? Oh, yeah!
> 
> In other news, I'll be launching a truly ridiculous drabble series called "Sebastian/Everyone" in the near future. Stay tuned :-)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lizzie is utterly adorable, until she isn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I basically lost my authorial mind when I came up with this. Oh, well . . .

Elizabeth awoke in her bed, with no recollection of the previous night, only a strange, discordant ring in her ears. Then she remembered the man with silver hair, and his whispers merged with the hateful music.

The door creaked open, and Paula poked her head inside. “Are you awake, my lady? Mister Sebastian said you were taken ill last night.”

Elizabeth inhaled deeply, pushing back tears. “Come in, Paula. Have you mended that black bonnet yet, the one with all the lace? It’s so _cute_!”

She skipped down the halls like a child, springing towards Ciel at breakfast, planting a kiss on his cheek, and then stealing his chocolate croissant with a giggle. Cheerily, she spent her morning with her needlework, humming to herself, clucking and cooing over the flowers she was embroidering. At luncheon, she bubbled over with brainless conversation. Through the afternoon, she strolled in the garden and picked a full bouquet for the dining table. At dinner, she stood up from her chair and gave Ciel a hug, and Ciel squirmed and pretended to like it. There was a distant crash— most likely the cook once again blowing up the kitchen . . .

“Excuse me, my lord,” Sebastian snorted. “I must attend to a disturbance.”

Ciel waved him off, and the butler sprinted from the dining hall without a second glance at the harmless girl, who was now nuzzling her husband’s ear.

“You can let go now, Lizzie,” Ciel grunted.

She still held onto him.

“Lizzie?”

“Do you think Sebastian’s the only one who knows their silverware?”

“What . . .” He choked on the words, for Elizabeth had grabbed a silver knife from the table and speared his throat. She deftly removed the knife and stabbed again, this time slicing into his chest, aiming expertly between two ribs to find his heart. She left the blade there and clasped her arms around him once more, tightening the noose around his neck, strangling her beautiful, arrogant husband with her embrace.

“Sebastian . . .” he murmured before closing his eyes.

“A passionate woman murders her love to save him? I approve!”

Elizabeth turned and saw a flame-haired woman dressed all in red, her green eyes bulging behind thick glasses, her hands closed around a whirring, machinated sword of sorts.

“Quiet, Grell,” a man dressed in a sober suit and wielding a strange metal staff replied, suddenly appearing beside her. “This is no joking matter.”

The two strangers continued bickering, and a lawnmower hummed from the direction of the kitchen. But Elizabeth heard none of it, instead transfixed by the cinematic reel unrolling from the hole in Ciel’s heart. It flew towards the ceiling, curling in on itself, and she gazed at panel after dark panel. She saw a cage and an altar, a shack and a forest, a bed, a nude demon lying where she should have been, yet a few bright panels showed her, dancing and smiling, among the darkness.

Then two scissor-like blades exploded forth from the man’s staff and slashed through the reel, and Ciel’s soul vanished, forever free from the reach of Hell. It left an otherworldly glow in its place.

“ _Lizzie_? What have you done?” A deep voice, layered with dissonant notes, rumbled through the room, and the whole hall was instantly drowned in black. “And you reapers are bound to ignore contracted souls . . .”

A fork whistled through the air, hurtling towards the red-clad woman, and a bloodcurdling shriek ripped through the air. Elizabeth winced, but she still clung to Ciel’s body, her fingers now exploring an odd bulge in her husband’s jacket.

“That rule was waived by those on high, just for tonight,” the stranger in the suit responded to the demon coolly, even as his partner howled, “provided that a human carried out the actual murder . . .”

“Which I did,” Elizabeth finished. “And you, demon, will _not_ have the pleasure of killing me for my presumption.”

“Is that so?” Sebastian’s voice echoed all around her, even as she heard sounds of an ongoing struggle— the redhead’s squeals, the clinking of hedge clippers and a chainsaw against a barrage of silver. “You think I will let you go, you imp?”

“You will have to.” She pulled a gun from Ciel’s jacket, pressed one last kiss to his brow, and shot herself in the head.

The last thing she heard was hysterical laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was an abrupt ending. Good news— I decided to write Dissonance V! 
> 
> Thanks for reading. If this successfully screwed with your head, do let me know in the comments :-P

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are appreciated!


End file.
